


Exchange Trip

by Manna



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, The Administration - Manna Francis
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-05-18
Packaged: 2019-05-08 15:07:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14696700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Manna/pseuds/Manna
Summary: An Administration Series/Deep Space Nine crossover written as a gift for a friend.  Garak ends up in New London, and things do not go well for him.  But then it's Garak, so they wouldn't.





	Exchange Trip

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Altariel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Altariel/gifts).



I have woken up in cells before. That was nothing special. I have even woken up in cells with no idea of how I arrived there. It's a more common occurrence that you might think.

So when I woke to find myself on a narrow bunk, lying on a mattress that verged on the hypothetical, I'm not exaggerating the coolness of my reaction to say that I didn't panic. I would characterise it more as a sinking feeling of familiarity and quiet despair.

I may have thought 'Why me?', but only as a pro forma. I knew very well why—because I'm Elim Garak, and the universe knows that too.

The cell was not large, a fact I tried not to give too much space in my awareness. I gave the door a cursory inspection, for form's sake. It was a door rather than a force field but it was equally impenetrable. The only features of interest in the place, beyond the bed, were a basic hygiene unit and a water dispenser. I felt thirsty, and I wondered what drug had been used to knock me out and bring me here. The last memory I had was of falling asleep in my quarters.

The cup provided was small, made of paper, and so flimsy it was hard to hold it without distorting the sides. I looked into it, assessing the water for the basic safety parameters of clarity and lack of any suspicious smell. That check it passed. There was, however, something more subtly wrong. I had to look for a long moment before I realised what it was.

My reflection. Or rather, what I could see of it in the cup. The picture was dim and indistinct, but I could make out the critical points: I had pale, pinkish skin and light hair.

Curious, I held my hand over the cup. The contrast was startling—my familiar greyish skin above, the smooth human palm reflected in the water. The reflection shimmered, and for a moment I wondered why. Then I realised my hands had become a little unsteady.

I drank the water, dropped the cup into a slot that seemed likely to be a disposal system, and sat down on the narrow bunk.

Holodeck? I tried a few commands that might be expected to end a program, to no avail. Somehow, despite the plausibility of the theory, I hadn't expected success.

***

The guards who eventually opened my cell door appeared on first inspection to be as human as my novelty reflection. They cuffed me and escorted me politely but firmly through grey windowless hallways which had clearly been designed by the same grim-minded architects as the cell. Let us, they had obviously said to themselves, come up with something that will frighten the prisoners here. Let us disorient them with endless identical corridors and unexplained numbers and letters on the walls. Let us thoroughly emphasize their status as insignificant, dehumanised non-entities utterly at the mercy of their captors.

It felt oddly homelike.

The smell, too, was familiar—slightly stale air with an unnecessarily pungent disinfectant failing to cover a range of unpleasant prison odors.

After a journey up in an elevator and along more corridors, we stopped by an unremarkable door; the white room inside made a clinical contrast to the hallway. It made one think instantly of medical procedures and then, inevitably, visualise blood splashing on the spotless floor. I expect the architects took home a bonus.

The guards directed me to sit at a table, then stood by the door, leaving me free to inspect my surroundings. While the details were unfamiliar, I quickly grasped the general theme. During my lifetime I have—in various capacities—seen sufficient interrogation facilities to recognise them from first principles when I find myself in yet another such room.

For one thing, the restraints on the chairs are _such_ a give away.

The opening door distracted me from my survey.

Another human entered, this one tall and blond and dressed in practical black. I spotted some kind of rank insignia on his sleeve—not Federation, or any other organisation with which I was familiar. A badge on the upper left breast of his jacket read 'I&I'. I wondered what the other 'I' stood for.

"Good morning," he said, still standing. "My name is Toreth. Senior Para-investigator Val Toreth, in fact, although I don't care what you call me. I've heard it all before."

It sounded like a Romulan name, and I wondered if it was a coincidence or something more significant. As for 'para-investigator'...well, I thought it made a nice euphemism. I liked that; a willingness to call an implement for digging anything but a spade is a reassuring mark of civilisation.

He laid a thin, flat screen of unfamiliar design on the table between us—a 'hand screen', I later learned. It was covered in text too small for me to read at this distance. I wondered if my name was on it, and if so, who I was. I wondered if he saw me as I saw myself or as my reflection appeared. I wondered if my skewed perceptions were the result of drugs or something deeper. I wondered, in an abstract way, how much this was going to hurt.

Having given me some time to think the situation over, he sat down.

"Normally it takes a while to explain a damage waiver," he said. "This one is simple. This is a level eight waiver. That means that you have two options—you'll tell me everything I want to know or, in the end, you'll die. Eventually. But before you do, we'll work our way through everything over there." He gestured towards the long bench and the chair. I followed the movement automatically—he was good, I granted him that.

When I looked back, he added, "I can do whatever the hell I think is required, and I will. It really is that simple. Is that clear?"

"Admirably."

"Now, we have video evidence that you were in the club when the assassination happened. Your partner's DNA was found on the weapon, and she was apprehended at the scene. You gave her access to the building—we have technical system evidence of that. So I'd rather skip the pointless denials and get on to discussing the names of your traitorous friends and their financiers. How we carry out that discussion is entirely up to you."

I was thinking furiously, to little practical end. Being tortured to death for someone else's political crimes had such a depth of irony that it felt almost inevitable. With zero knowledge of the culture in which I had landed, my chances of concocting a story that would cause them to leave me alone for any length of time was thin to non-existent. Without more information, there was really only one avenue that seemed open to me.

He stood and gestured toward the business-like chair. "Well, if you—"

"Before we start," I said, "may I ask a question?"

He sat down again. "Go ahead."

"What is the date?"

"The third. Of June," he added, when my expression remained enquiring.

"I meant the year."

No flicker of reaction on his face as he gave me a date which was certainly not the one I was expecting. Even the format was unfamiliar.

"And we are...on Earth?"

His eyebrows lifted slightly—it looked like anticipation. "Where else?"

"Ah." Not a time or place in which I had any hope of bluffing my way. "In that case, I do have something to tell you. I am an alien, specifically a Cardassian, from hundreds of years into what may be this world's eventual future or may be something parallel or quite separate. I have no idea of how I came to be here, in what I assume you see as a human body. I also have no idea whose body it is or where the consciousness of the former inhabitant has gone, but I assure you that I have no access to his memories or any of the information you want from him. In my own world I'm a tailor, so unless you require some hemming tips I'm afraid I won't be able to help you."

I had considered a range of possible reaction, from anger to simple dismissal. What I received was a careful, thorough inspection.

Finally he blinked once, slowly. "Say that again."

The tone filled me with professional admiration and dismay. If I had been an ordinary person, and if I _had_ been making up a ridiculous story, I might well have reconsidered at that point. He sounded as though he rather hoped I _would_ say it again, so that he could thoroughly enjoy making me regret lying to him.

I repeated the information, trying to put in as much conviction as I could manage. He watched me with the same flat, mildly curious expression.

When I had finished, he nodded to himself and stood.

"Cardassian. I see. I think we're done for the day." He paused, then added, "That is what you wanted, isn't it?"

"Er, yes." This time the mildness of his voice had thrown me a little. "But if I may ask—what happens now?"

He smiled, and I could see I'd managed to ask the right question—from his point of view. "I'm going upstairs to have a cup of coffee and a biscuit, and replan the casework. _You_ are going to talk to a psych specialist interrogator. Maybe a few of them. Probably half the department, in fact, because the only thing they like more than breaking people who are trying to get out of here by faking being mentally unfit for interrogation is getting their hands on someone who really is delusional but still has valuable information. That always makes their day. Have fun."

Somehow, I doubted it.

He turned to the guards. "Take her back to her cell."

I was halfway down the hallway before the significance of the pronoun hit me.

***  
***

I was wrong about the civilisation, or at least about the naming scheme. The next people I met introduced themselves quite straightforwardly as interrogators, specialising in the questioning of the mentally disturbed.

One possibility that had occurred to me early on was that I _was_ being interrogated by the Federation, or someone else, who had decided to try out this, on the surface so implausible, scenario to see if my tongue would loosen if I believed I were talking to people so far removed from my present. Everyone always seems to think that I know so much more than I do—I put it down to my natural mysterious charm.

As a plan it had the obvious flaw that if my captors displayed the slightest sign of modern knowledge, I would see through it. So I set about conducting my own little reverse interrogation, doing my best not to arouse any suspicion that I might have a practical knowledge of their techniques.

I quickly decided that either the men—and one woman—who spoke to me were the best actors I have ever come across, or they were flawlessly programmed holodeck creations, or I had really somehow ended up in a more primitive age, if such a thing exists.

After that there was nothing to do but stick to my story and wait until they grew bored. And pray for a return to Deep Space Nine as sudden and inexplicable as my arrival here. Whenever I start longing for that place, I know that I'm in serious trouble.

For the first two days their approach was largely verbal, with the application of a few light relaxants. My physiology caused them no surprise, so the body I was calling home seemed to be a perfectly normal, functional human female. Her name, I discovered, was Angela Mabey. Before my unfortunate arrival, she had worked at a hostess in some kind of entertainment establishment in which a government official had met an untimely and, so it was implied, messy and painful end. I now had to face the consequences of what seemed to have been a rather badly planned operation.

For once I had the wonderful luxury of telling the truth. Or one simple approximation of it. They took me through my life as unhappy Cardassian exile and purveyor of fine garments to the unappreciative masses again and again, looking for cracks and inconstancies. We were both somewhat hampered—they had no idea of what they should be asking, and I had no way of telling them what they wanted to know.

I was impressed that they appeared to understand that prisoners telling the truth do make mistakes and contradict themselves. I put it down to the professionalism of the establishment. Given that all governments, however they present themselves in polite company, require the services provided by the people in that place, isn't it better to keep things above-board and respectable? There might be more paperwork, but the quality of the interrogators' work stays acceptable and fewer prisoners die accidently.

Believe me, when you are one of those prisoners interrogator competence becomes a topic of great concern.

Fairly early on they showed me a mirror—they had clearly seen my initial interview with the para-investigator. They asked me to strip with the calm reasonableness of people perfectly willing to use whatever means necessary to ensure I complied. My theory has always been that pain tomorrow is better than pain today.

It was certainly an unusual experience, even by the high standards of my life so far. Oddly, as long as I was looking in the mirror I didn't feel in the slightest bit naked, because the person in the mirror was not myself. By human standards, as I understand them, I—she—was far from unattractive. The lankness of her blonde hair could be attributed to the restricted hygiene opportunities, which are a widespread standard procedure for prisoners under interrogation. The most disconcerting things were the paleness of my skin and the eerie way the reflection exactly matched my movements.

No. The most disconcerting thing was that when I looked down I could _still_ see my real self. That made the dissonance a thousand times more acute.

Human faces, once you learn to read them, are far more expressive than Cardassian. Not because we are born liars—although that helps—but simply because of the difference in the flexibility of the skin. In the mirror, I remember, I looked in turn shocked, curious, slightly panicked—a fascinating selection of emotions, all underlayed with a fine apprehension for my near future.

On the third day, they moved on to less friendly enquiries, pursued with equal professionalism. I spent, as best as I can recall, a total of eight very tedious and uncomfortable days in their company. There comes a point in interrogations when even the most experienced subject stops worrying that their captors will make a mistake and kill them, and instead starts hoping for it. Let us simply say that I reached that point on day six, and move on.

***

On the ninth day, having been returned to my cell the evening before and allowed a full night's sleep, I awoke feeling somewhat hopeless. My borrowed body ached, in ways that were depressingly familiar, and I wondered how long they would be prepared to press their questions. The para-investigator had indicated that my death was not something to be avoided, merely delayed.

Luckily I had things to distract me from worrying about my imminent demise. I had overheard enough from guards and interrogators to discover that the detention cells, and even the interrogation levels, were below ground. Theoretically and logically, of course, that should make no difference at all to windowless rooms, but the notable thing about phobias is their utter lack of logic. On the rare occasions when I was not too exhausted, too drugged, or in too much pain, the matter of the cell's size was becoming more, to pick an unfortunate word, pressing.

It didn't help at all that I had a much closer and more confining prison—the body I was trapped within. Intermittently I was gripped by a powerful urge to break out, to tear at my skin with my nails and try to find my real body beneath.

The less I had to distract me the more acute the awareness of enclosure grew. Being rested focused my mind in a most unwelcome way. That morning I was still trying my level best to persuade myself that I was not on the verge of panic when the guards arrived, sooner than I expected.

They always do, of course.

However, we went to a different floor—only one above the detention level. The interrogation room was new, but the occupant was not. It was the blond para-investigator again. I wondered what conclusions the psychiatric specialists had reached.

When I had taken a seat opposite him, folding my hands in my lap to minimise the effect of the handcuffs, he dropped a screen on the table again. It seemed to be his standard opening technique.

"Congratulations," he said.

That is never a phrase one wants to hear from the side of the table I was currently occupying.

"Yes?" I asked, as he seemed to expect some audience participation and I had neither reason nor desire to antagonise him.

"You've convinced psych." His voice was far more informal than at our first meeting. "Or I think you have—they used a lot of long words, as usual. There's a huge file that I suppose I'll have to read at some point. But the summary page is 'we give up, have her back'."

The 'her' threw me a little, as it had continued to do for the last eight days.

"And are you convinced, too?" I asked.

"Actually, I believed you right away. I collected a nice pool on it first thing this morning. You're not very popular on level five."

It took me a moment to work out what he meant, and he seemed to take my silence as surprise.

"Oh, not the crap about you being an alien, but I believed that _you_ believed it."

"Why?" I asked, genuinely curious.

"Experience." He favoured me with a cold smile. "And because you said 'his memories'. Right at the beginning, when you were talking about yourself. I'm sure you're a good liar, but that kind of confidence is hard to pull off."

"So why did you let them—" 'Let' implied that he had some aversion to the idea. "Why did you transfer me to the psychiatric specialists?"

"It's procedure. You find a mentally unfit, you fill in the form and send them to psych." As though to emphasise the change in his approach to me, he leaned back in the chair and crossed his legs. "I could've kept you, though. Want to know why I didn't? I think someone with access to some very naughty technology implanted a trigger in you, and when you were caught that trigger went off. Real cutting-edge stuff. Everything you knew, everything you were, was covered up by this Cardassian crap. We'll never get to it, because you can't choose to give it to us. So there was no point wasting my investigation time on your interrogation when I had other leads."

It was an idea that simply hadn't occurred to me. And on a cursory inspection it had a certain logic. The central problem with implanted fictional covers is that they can usually be dismantled by patient and persistent work. Internal inconsistencies are the key. Inevitably—as the fake memories must mesh with the real world, which is an unimaginably complex place—discrepancies arise which can be used to trigger doubts in the subject and cause them to unravel the creation from within.

As a piece of mental manipulation, the theory the para-investigator had proposed was a far better one than would appear at first glance. On the one hand, once I had decided not to lie my story blatantly and immediately alerted the interrogators that something was wrong. However, it left relatively few imperfections for the tools of logical interrogation to flake away and enlarge. I had, quite simply, appeared from nowhere. No one could disturb me by proving that my friends did not exist, or by demonstrating that my parents were not the people I believed them to be. I had a background and identity which were utterly self-contained, perfectly cut off from the world around me. A personal body perception that bolstered the self-image required by the identity would probably be enough to keep it strong.

There was no entry point, no unexplainable contradiction from which a crack could propagate. I knew and accepted that the body I occupied had a past of which I had no knowledge. I could be introduced to people who said they knew me, or shown photographs of myself doing things I didn't recall, and it would be perfectly consistent with what I already believed. I could perhaps be induced to question the whole creation, but that was of little use. Have you ever tried doubting your whole existence in one entire piece? Go on, try it. See?

The para-investigator was watching me closely.

Was it true? Had I been constructed to fit into someone's idea of a plausible future world? The whole idea was, I told myself firmly, ridiculous. I had far too much past, too much history—actually, I've always felt that—and too much knowledge of things that were impossible for someone from this time to implant.

Or...I _imagined_ that I had a great deal of knowledge. What did I really possess? Everything I knew required the use of equipment massively far in advance of anything these people would have. In a world of replicators and computers that provide answers to all our questions, we have taken several steps back from mere personal understanding. Which in practical terms meant that my wonderfully advanced future technology and science was so much unprovable fantasy. Perhaps if I were allowed to talk to a few scientists, I might be able to tell them something that would demonstrate impossible knowledge. Or I might sound like a delusional writer of fiction with a poor grasp of physics.

Did I really want to know?

"So where do we go from here?" I asked, relieved to find my voice steady and almost flippant.

"I'll put in an application to Psychoprogramming."

Now there was a name with which to conjure nightmares. "Who are they?"

"Experts in what I think's been done to you. They'll be able to strip out the implanted parts and uncover your own memories. With luck."

So much for the brief reprieve. "And let's say, just for the sake of argument, that you're wrong and the memories I have now are the only real ones? Or that anything underlying them has been seriously damaged by this hypothetical memory implant?"

"Not my speciality, I'm afraid—but nothing good, I shouldn't think." He shrugged. "They never give money-back guarantees, anyway. But provided you don't end up as a drooling vegetable, and I am right, when they're done they'll send you back here for further interrogation."

"So I end up a mental incompetent or you torture me to death?"

He didn't even blink. "Not necessarily me. The assassination case is closed—I'm just tying up the loose ends now. But if you have been implanted, Psychoprogramming will want a fresh investigation into who's playing with their restricted toys, so if my caseload's full then someone else in General Criminal will pick up where I left off."

"I'm looking forward to it already. And after that?"

"Depends on what they find out. You might be executed. Or if you provide good information willingly, then maybe heavy re-education. That's all up to the Justice system, although we can put in a recommendation one way or the other."

I don't know why I always feel the need to ask those questions. Even with so many competing candidates, I'm sure my curiosity will be the death of me. And so, of course, I asked something else. "How long do I have to wait?"

"Could be anything up to a couple of months before there's a slot free at Psychoprogramming. Maybe longer."

"A...two _months_?"

"Maybe longer. Blame your friends. Psychoprogramming are busy with their new resister re-education techniques—there are too many of your kind around. And like I said, my case is closed. Your interrogation is no longer a priority, so really it depends on whether they think you're an interesting case."

"No." The interrogation room around me came into sudden, sharp focus, along with an awareness of the levels above, the distance to the surface I hadn't yet seen. Buried alive... "No," I repeated. "I can't wait that long. I can't stay shut up down here."

"Why?"

With an effort, I collected myself. When I didn't answer, he cocked his head slightly, examining me. Then he smiled. "You're claustrophobic?"

"Nonsense."

The smile widened a fraction. "No? We can test it, you know that. Shall we? I can easily find a box. How tall are you? I'll give you a centimetre or two all round."

I can bear many, many things, but of all the unpleasantnesses I ought to have become accustomed to over the years, utter humiliation is the one I detest most. I inclined my head, trying to retain some dignity. "That won't be necessary. I am, as you say, claustrophobic."

"Well, I'll make a note of it on your file, just in case you make it back from Psychoprogramming in any state to care. Or, who knows, maybe you'll get lucky." He smiled, in a way that suggested the amusement would be all on his part. "Maybe they'll trash the claustrophobia along with the rest of your brain." He stood, nodding to the guards. "Take her back to her cell."

If I had known anything he would want to hear, in that instant I would have told him. Anything to delay the moment when the cell door closed behind me.

As I started the too-short walk back, I tried to distract myself with the information I had learned. And with the possibilities the para-investigator had raised.

I might not be me. Cardassia might not be real. Everything I had believed and tried not to believe, everything I had fought for and fought against, everyone I had loved and hated—all that might be pure, intangible imagination, and not even my own imagination at that. Even the claustrophobia I was trying to avoid thinking about might be a mere artistic flourish meant to create a rounded, believable personality. The concept was abhorrent and utterly entrancing at the same time and in almost equal measures.

It left me with only one certainty: if I ever met up with whoever had created my cover, if cover it was, I would have some choice words ready for them.

***  
***

I was surprised to see Toreth again only five days later. I'd imagined, uncomfortable as the thought was, that I was either to be left to rot until my transfer, or that I'd be convicted and punished if the delay became inconvenient for them. Toreth had told me that his case was closed and my interrogation was no longer a priority. That suggested whatever information they supposed my body to possess had already been obtained elsewhere.

However, less than a week later I was back in the interview room.

"My boss wants me to have you look at some more pictures of known resisters, see if we can establish your contacts," Toreth said.

"I thought the one thing we had established by now is that such an exercise is entirely futile."

"Humour me," he said. He really had the most excellent unfriendly smile.

***

The chair was new to me, as was that precise section of the building. For the most part it was simply a restraint device, but at head height it had a white plastic shell, rather like an oversized helmet. It had a brutal simplicity of design. Someone, the chair said clearly, will have a bad day today. Looking down at the tight restraints on my wrists, I guessed it was going to be me. I tried to keep my breathing even and be grateful that the front of the shell was open.

"We really are wasting our valuable time," I said as he secured the rest of the straps. "Or rather, your valuable time. I confess I have no pressing engagements."

"My boss thinks otherwise. Probably because he doesn't read my reports. Put your head back."

He locked a tight, padded restraining strap across my forehead. I kept as still as possible, so as not to draw my mind's attention to the fact that I couldn't move. Could not move at all. Could not even turn my head away from the large screen on the wall opposite me. The bright light and the free, breathable air all around stopped me short of a full phobic reaction, but I've had better mornings.

I'll digress briefly, if I may, into the area of neural scanning. Show a person—of any species—a picture of a familiar person or place and they will recognise it. He, she or it may have the best poker face in the quadrant, they may show no detectable hint of outward physical reaction, but their brain says 'yes!'. Neurons will fire in a predictable, albeit species-specific pattern. And in many species that pattern can be detected with really quite primitive equipment. From what I could see of it, the scanner on the chair was somewhat more sophisticated than the basic veracity assessment devices I had come to be on intimate terms with elsewhere in the building, and definitely a long way above examining animal entrails. Still not what _I_ would call a good torture accessory, though.

The Federation, bless its noble heart, considers such scanning an unwarrantable intrusion into the privacy of citizens whose guilt has not yet been established in a free and open court of law. My current hosts clearly did not.

I expected professionalism and I wasn't disappointed. Toreth kept his gaze fixed on me. Pictures can be recalled, sensor readings displayed again, but no recording, however sophisticated, can exactly capture a prisoner's reactions.

Most of the people were entirely unfamiliar. Some faces appeared more than once, although I couldn't determine a pattern. Occasionally, at irregular intervals, one would flash up that I recognised as an employee of I&I—internal controls for the neural scanning. Recklessly, I complimented Toreth on the protocol; he ignored me.

Then Julian's face appeared.

I'm afraid that I absolutely gaped at the screen. In fact, I actually started up in the chair and the restraints caught me, and, well. Let us say that the neural scanner proved quite unnecessary to detect my reaction.

The picture was not a photograph, I realised a moment later, but an amazingly accurate computer-generated image. It was unmistakably Julian, and although computer likenesses are usually created with a neutral expression, I thought he looked a little afraid. Perhaps I was merely projecting. My first thought, once my brain resumed normal function, was I had been quite expertly played and all previous evidence to the contrary I was still somewhere in the alpha quadrant.

Toreth brought a second picture up on the screen beside Julian's—another computer-generated image, this time of a woman whose face I thought I recognised from much earlier in the session.

"Who are they?" he asked, looking at me.

"I know him," I said. Denial was pointless. "But I have absolutely no idea who she is."

Toreth shook his head. "Fucking incredible."

I'd never heard him use profanity before. From the casual tone, I deduced he swore a great deal outside work. I wondered what had provoked this.

"Who is she?" I asked. It broke the rule of not getting involved in conversations with interrogators mid-interrogation, but I admit I was desperate to find out where the image had come from. I'm not in the habit of carrying around photographs of my lunch companions, however dear to me. "Who?" I repeated when he didn't answer. "Tell me."

"Shut up," he said, entirely without malice. Then he added. "Or, no. Actually, _you_ can tell _me_ his name."

I closed my mouth.

He sighed. "I get paid the same whether you tell me now, or we take the long way round and you tell me later. You're the only one it matters to."

"Doctor Julian Bashir."

"Bashir. You mentioned him before." His gaze flicked away from my face for a moment as he made the effort to recall. Then he looked back. "A friend on your space station—you had dinner with him regularly."

"Lunch," I corrected, and he nodded. He'd known already, of course, the little additional test performed quite automatically.

"Interesting," he said. Then without another word, he stood. I rather hoped he would release the straps before he left, but he didn't.

***

From time to time the images flipped. Occasionally they changed to both Julian, or both the unknown woman. I watched. No doubt my mind's responses were still being monitored, but there seemed to be precious little extra I could betray at this point. I admit that, beyond the basic colour variances, most humans look much alike to me. However, the woman had nothing whatsoever in common with Julian—not in her skin colour, her eyes, her mouth, her expression. Nothing.

I know that on Deep Space Nine there are rumours current about myself and Doctor Bashir. I'm certainly fond of the boy—and I flatter myself that he has some regard for me—but there are awkward questions of anatomy which I have never been inspired to attempt to overcome, not even by his undoubted naïve appeal. Biology makes a safe barrier between us, a shield against dangerous impulses, because one thing of which I am entirely certain is that I would be no good for him. And what is affection if not a desire to spare its object from pain?

If he were indeed here, in this place, sparing him from pain would be entirely more complex than merely indulging my delusions of nobility by refraining from overstepping the boundaries of friendship.

Half an hour later, Toreth returned. Now he did release me, and waved me over to the usual small table at the side of the room.

"And how much did you win this time?" I asked when we were both seated.

He tilted his head, then grinned briefly. Genuine amusement or something close. "Nothing. I don't take money from Systems, not even easy money like that."

The pictures were still on the screen, Julian on the left, and he consulted his hand screen and pointed at him.

"Describe that one."

"Describe Julian? You mean, his looks or his personality?" I was hedging, unsure as to the purpose of the question. I drew no response. "Well. He has moderately dark skin for his species, although not so dark as Captain Sisko, and hair which seems black, but which is in fact a very dark brown. Dark brown eyes, also. A not unpleasant face, for a human. Rather expressive. I'm told that he has an engaging smile."

"Did you ever fuck him?"

The unexpected resonance with my earlier thoughts made me hesitate. His voice sharpened like a scalpel, hard-edged steel.

"Come on—it's an easy question."

Really, there was no point in playing games with him. "No, our relationship was rather more intellectual...and there are anatomical considerations which make it inadvisable."

"Because you're an alien, right. And—" he opened his hand screen again. "Also a torturer, a spy, a traitor, and an assassin for some kind of alien secret service."

One of the unfortunate side effects of prolonged and intense interrogation is forgetting what one has and hasn't said. It's something I've taken advantage of many times. I strongly suspected I had said far more about my multitasking lifestyle than I might have wished, but exactly what I didn't know.

So I merely shrugged. "Traitor is a little unfair. I prefer to think that I have a clear but idiosyncratic sense of where my ultimate loyalties lie."

He didn't react to the small defiance. Instead he looked up and smiled, back to his easy manner. "I finally opened your full psych report. Made a better bedtime read than I was expecting. I liked the Obsidian Order stuff—someone put a lot of thought into this story."

I had clearly already elaborated at some length, then. "That information wasn't in the summary?"

"An appendix—details of your delusions. Irrelevant to the case, you see."

For some reason, that hit harder than I—or, I suspect, he, even though the taunting was plainly deliberate—could have imagined. I was used to being someone whose knowledge was valuable, someone whose interrogation would be a lengthy and complex process, whose every word would be weighed and scrutinized. Here I could scream out my deepest secrets and they would be dismissed as fake or mere confabulation. No one cared about Deep Space Nine, or the Federation, or Cardassia. The entire Alpha Quadrant was simply a story. I was, quite literally, worth nothing to anyone. And when being valuable to someone is all that keeps one alive, you can see why at that moment I felt my prospects were bleak.

If I had no information, then I might still aspire to being an engaging puzzle. Toreth had mentioned that the mere existence of my supposedly implanted memories might be of interest to some parties. Of the options available to take me apart—Toreth, the Psychiatric interrogators, or the quaintly named Psychoprogramming—I knew which one I marginally preferred.

"So did the report come to any other conclusions?" I asked.

"That if it is a memory alteration, it's a very good memory alteration. Like I said, cutting-edge. Actually, they came up with a whole selection of possibilities, which I guess counts as progress of sorts."

Toreth tossed the screen carelessly across the table. Of course it was no more than a ploy to spread a little more fear and despondency. Always game, I picked it up and studied it. The suggestions were surprisingly imaginative. Toreth's favourite, the memory implant, topped the list. Below it came a selection of genuine human mental disorders, and finally the possibility that I had been equipped with physical, chemical, genetic and-or biological pain resistance and drug blocking mechanisms, beyond their expertise to detect, which rendered me immune to interrogation. The file helpfully provided a link to the appropriate section of the appendix which described my delusion that I had indeed once been fitted with such a device.

Rather ruefully, I found myself wishing the latter delusion was still in operation. Thank you, dear Julian. Of course, whether it would have worked in this situation was a very different question.

"One can't help but notice that 'the prisoner is telling the truth' has not made the cut," I mentioned.

He laughed. "Funnily enough, no. Tell me, in your world do people regularly wake up in another reality?"

I sighed. "More often than you might think." Especially for those of us with whom the universe has developed a personal grievance.

He nodded to the screen. "How about him? Do you think he might be here, too?"

Now I wished for a mirror. In my own body, I know I would have showed no reaction; in this one, I feared very much that my emotions were an open book, however backwards their neural scanning technology. "I have no idea. May I ask something?"

"Go ahead."

"How did you come by his picture?"

Quite obviously, he had been waiting for me to ask.

"I thought you might be curious. Psych have some pretty top of the range scanning equipment. They lent me that—" He nodded towards the scanner I'd sat in. I made a mental note not to be too critical of it if the topic arose. "Not quite as nice as Psychoprogramming, and they don't have the manipulation capability, but they can see what's going on in your head. While, say, you're looking at a picture of yourself." He pulled the screen back across the table, and scanned through the report. "Highly specific self image processing abnormalities. Interesting stuff. Anyway, while I was yawning my way through it, I had an idea."

He stopped and waited.

"Do you see him as male or female?" I asked, focusing my attention on the pictures while I considered where best to steer the conversation.

"Guess."

I glanced down at my grey, soft-scaled hands. At that moment I would have given a great deal to have one other person in the world who could see them too. "Female."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because the images you told me were of myself were female." Thinking it through, the reasoning was thin at best. "Instinct. A guess."

He nodded. "So?"

There was an expression on his face it took me a moment to interpret. The situation and the uniform threw me, perhaps, but then I realised what was wrong. He was genuinely interested in the answer, on a level that was personal rather than professional. The rush of relief made me a little giddy.

"I would imagine that you took the measured aberrations in my brain's self image processing, you created an algorithm duplicating the effect, and you applied it to this woman's picture." Or rather, the 'Systems' he had mentioned had done so. "The other one is a control, processed to look computer generated. And, since you had to check, I assumed to you they're identical."

"Not quite identical but close enough. The image analysis systems can see which is which, but I can't. So how the fuck can _you_ tell?"

"I'm very sorry to say that I have no idea."

He pointed to the picture we both saw as female. "She's your partner, the one who pulled the trigger."

"I see." Something struck me. "You said my partner was apprehended."

"Yes."

"And you've questioned her?"

"Thoroughly." His voice was as bland as his face.

"And did she...was she who she appeared to be?"

"She never claimed to be from another universe, if that's what you mean."

"What happened to her?"

He shrugged. "She died under questioning when Parsons was wrapping up the interrogation. Unfortunate dosage error—equipment fault."

Entirely deliberate, I imagined. Toreth did not seem like a man to take professional mistakes so casually.

I stared at the pictures for a little while longer. I felt nothing for this unknown dead woman. If we all spent our time mourning every stupid, pointless death in the universe, no one would get out of bed in the morning. Of course, marshalling a convincing argument as to why that would be a bad thing for the universe in general is a little trickier.

She had done something treacherous, which seemed to have been both ill-planned and very probably futile, and she had paid the price. That was the way of the world—of all worlds. But...Julian. Ah, Julian.

"She never mentioned Deep Space Nine?" I knew I was playing by the rules he had set but I had to know. "How long did you question her?"

"Long enough to be sure she wasn't holding anything back."

I believed him. Or at least, I believe that relying on his probably extensive experience, he thought it to be true. But suppose that Julian's genetic enhancements had been translated here in some way that would allow him to resist longer than Toreth would believe possible? Suppose the boy had been silly enough to imagine resisting could help him?

Yes, I am something of a pessimist, but as justification I can point to...well, my life.

"And she knew all about this assassination you keep mentioning?" I asked.

"Yes. Plenty of detail. Names, places, how and why."

I took a deep breath and forced myself to relax. "You must have the interrogation recorded. May I watch it?"

That got me a long, thoughtful inspection, before he picked up his screen and stood. "I'll see what I can do."

***

Some short time later, after I had been returned to my cell, a guard delivered one of the small, flexible hand screens that everyone seemed to carry. I stayed up watching the recording for most of what I had to call the night. At least I am accustomed to arbitrary day and night cycles. To someone used to living with the sun up above a place like I&I is even more frightening.

After half of the interrogation I was quite sure that the woman they had arrested had no part of Julian in her. I watched the rest because I was bored, and curious to learn more about the world, and desperate for anything I could use to hold the para-investigator's interest.

By the time I reached the end I rather wished that I had never had the idea. It sharpened my visions of the future rather depressingly, and confirmed that so far the interrogators had been positively gentle with me.

"She never implicated Mabey," I said the next day, when I was returned to an interview room, this time one without any interrogation paraphernalia. "She said they used her to get close to the target, but she knew nothing about the operation."

"You still gave her access to the building." He smiled. "But yes, you're right. If you'd kept your mouth shut you'd probably be sitting in a re-education centre right now."

I wondered if that would be better or worse than where I was at that moment.

"But that won't happen now," Toreth added. "You've piqued a lot of curiosity. Mindfuck want you, case or no case—they want to look for implants. They're arguing that, whatever your mental state, you're a complicit resister with no family worth speaking about, and so we can run you through the Justice system for a quick political conviction."

"'Justice system'? Named by someone with a strong sense of irony, I see."

He ignored my comment. I wondered if he knew what irony meant. "Of course, once you're convicted and over at Mindfuck, all waivers are void. The form might say fast-track re-education, but in reality they just want to figure out what's been done to you. In the end they'll probably decide they can only do it with a scalpel and a microscope, but I bet it'll take them a while before _they're_ desperate enough to make it sound like an attractive idea."

I felt like a mouse, batted around by a bored cat, and I didn't like it. Whenever possible I prefer to be the cat. But I feared that my value, even as a toy, was slipping.

"Thank you so much for your generous sharing of knowledge. But I'm afraid there is no point trying to scare me into confessing something new. Believe me, I'm already as frightened as you could wish, but you—they—want something that I cannot provide. So you will have no choice but to continue to torture me until...well, I imagine you have a very efficient crematorium somewhere. If that was your last throw, the game is over."

"Not quite the last throw. I have one more thing I can try but I need you to sign a permission form."

"You need me to...I beg your pardon?"

"Sign for it." The Para-investigator sighed, as though embarrassed. "With this level of waiver, experimental techniques are technically covered. But since the case is closed, and it involves an outside agency, they want a record on file that you're submitting willingly to the process."

I contemplated the bureaucracy involved, then gave up before I did damage to my fragile human brain. "So let me see if I understand this. If a prisoner agrees, then you can do whatever you like to them, no matter what the waiver says. That seems to render the whole process somewhat moot."

"There are proper safeguards," he said with a commendably straight face. "Access to representatives, clean drug screen, all that crap. Couldn't have us just coercing people into letting us fill them full of drugs which have a bunch of letters and numbers instead of a name, could we?"

"Of course not. And you have one of these excitingly labelled vials ready for me?"

"No. No drugs. Not much in the way of enclosed spaces, even. In fact, I can promise it'll be completely safe and painless."

"Why are you doing this?" I asked. "Why not hand me to Psychoprogramming?"

"Professional pride?" he suggested. We shared a brief moment of mutual amusement, then he shook his head. "Seriously—because I want to fuck with someone."

An interesting slip of knowledge, I thought. Then the para-investigator smiled.

"You can tell him that, of course. If you do, there's a pretty good chance he'll refuse to help. And then you're no use to me any more and I'll toss you to Mindfuck. My case is all wrapped up without your evidence. The only people who're interested in you now all wear lab coats and cut up brains for fun."

"You have an excellent facility for letting someone know their true worth," I said, with unconcealed bitterness.

"Not interested?" He shrugged. "Then you can go back to the cell and wait for Justice to pass you on to Psychoprogramming. The good news is I doubt it'll take long—they seemed keen enough to fast-track you."

I sighed. "Give me the forms."

***

I couldn't believe how good it was to feel the sun on my face, even for the short walk from the building to the waiting car. I dragged my feet, half-blinded by the light reflected from large expanses of white stone, but feeling as though I were drinking it in through every pore. I had never experienced such a feeling before. Perhaps it was some bleed-through effect from my new body. Perhaps it was the pure joy of release from confinement and confirmation that the sky did still stretch all the way to infinity.

Despite Angela Mabey's apparent lowliness as a resister, I merited two armed and attentive guards between the building and car doors and during the journey. I ignored them and peered out of the tinted windows, trying to avoid seeing my reflection as I studied the city. It looked nothing like the few historical images of the earth city of London I've seen. It seemed to be very much all of a period, and I wondered if the place had suffered some kind of disaster which necessitated rebuilding. The I&I buildings themselves were the kind of monumental, stark and ugly style favoured by repressive regimes to remind the populace that someone is always watching.

The building we drove to, while also new, had an attractive courtyard with sculptures, and a rather pretty glass atrium. Something called SimTech, a name which had featured on the consent forms I had signed, had its grey and blue logo tastefully displayed, so I assumed this was the place.

Toreth, who hadn't spoken on the drive, escorted me to the door. "Wait here," he said to the two guards, and ushered me in.

Doctor Warrick...I confess that, despite the pictures of Julian morphed from the other resister's image, and all the long rigmarole that had brought us there, simply his title had made me hope. But the man waiting for us in the reception area was as unfamiliar as anyone else I had met. As we approached, he was also tight-lipped and unsmiling.

"I want to see the forms again," he said to Toreth without pre-amble.

Toreth was obviously expecting nothing else—he had the screen ready to hand over.

Doctor Warrick studied the forms, then nodded. "And you consent to these protocols?" he asked me directly. "You understand what they mean?"

After all the days of professional impersonality, the concern rather startled me. "I—yes. Yes, if the procedure is as explained."

"It's perfectly safe," he said. "Safety is very important to us at SimTech."

"Despite which, when I first met him I was investigating a death here in the sim," Toreth said.

"That was corporate sabotage," Warrick said, the friendliness in his voice quite iced over. "As your investigation—"

"Let's get on with it," Toreth said. "I don't have all day."

***

"I am claustrophobic," I pointed out mildly as the upper section of the scanner began to move back up from the bed to allow me into place. Well, I had been instructed to bring up any potentially relevant medical conditions immediately as they occurred to me.

Toreth simply grinned. Warrick frowned, and halted the movement with a touch of a screen.

"Well, I could administer a short-acting sedative to—"

"No," Toreth said.

"It will be completely flushed from her system by the time we're in the sim."

"No drugs. It took me days to clear her out as it is."

"If she's claustrophobic, I can't simply—"

"This is still an I&I procedure. I have to follow evidence protocols. If you're going to kick up a fuss about everything, I might as well take her back and try our way some more."

The doctor's face tightened with anger. I watched the interplay with interest. It was quite clear that despite the veneer of professionalism, they were acquaintances beyond any historical investigation of a death, and perhaps even more intimate than that. I was sure I could learn some interesting facts about the two of them so long as I kept quiet and pretended I didn't care. At that moment, though, the confrontation seemed to be heading in an unfortunate direction.

"The condition is very mild," I said. "I'll be perfectly fine, I assure you."

I ended the argument by climbing onto the scanner bed and arranging myself.

"All right. If you're sure—tell me if you experience any discomfort, and we can stop at any point. Now, we'll just take a quick scan," Doctor Warrick continued. "It will mean that your sim body won't be one hundred percent accurate, but we're testing some new algorithms which speed the process up quite significantly, so it should be good enough."

Doctor Warrick liked to talk. Toreth made no attempt to stop him as he ran through everything that was happening, as though I was no different to anyone else he had introduced to the sim.

Once I grasped the principles I was both impressed and appalled. Impressed by the man's intelligence and sheer determination, and appalled at the crudity of the tools he was using. Comparing the sim to the holodeck felt rather like meeting someone who had dreamed up the concept of powered flight and was trying to achieve it with wood, paper, and very fast pedaling. Much like watching the Federation government in action, in fact.

To distract myself from the enclosure of the scanning equipment, I concentrated on trying to remember one of the historical figures from Earth Doctor Bashir had mentioned during our conversations. Someone cursed with vision far beyond his time, destined to see his dreams live only on parchment.

"Leonardo da Vinci," I said.

"I beg your pardon?" Doctor Warrick asked.

"Oh, nothing. Have you heard of him?"

"Of course," he said, with the mildly offended air of someone asked if they could count to ten.

"I'm sorry. I meant no offense. But I can't take for granted how much of a congruent history we share."

That stopped him. He looked at Toreth, who shrugged. "I already told you, she's delusional. But not the kind of delusional which means she can't consent to being here."

"I just meant that you reminded me of him," I said quickly, before we could enter into another argument about my presence there. "You obviously have a quite visionary grasp of technological possibilities."

"Oh! Well, thank you." His small smile told me more about how pleased he was than the modest acceptance of the compliment.

***

The entrance room was perfectly convincing, with low chairs which replicated the pose of the sim couches, and a table. Nothing spectacular, but I supposed most visitors to the sim needed to be introduced somewhat gently to the novel experience. I stood up and straightened my clothes, also perfectly adequately copied.

Clearly Doctor Warrick expected me to be impressed.

"It's very nice," I said. Honestly, after the past days at I&I I wasn't at my best.

Toreth laughed. "Warrick, I told you. She's from the future. They have a holographic sim."

"With solid light, I suppose." He sounded understandably put out.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I couldn't tell you that. I really don't understand how a holodeck works."

That was not strictly true. Quite abruptly, though, I felt I understood the purpose behind the Federation's Prime Directive. For the first time I was in the presence of someone who might actually listen, and consider, and take frail threads of alien knowledge and weave them into something that could change his world. In the unlikely event of my finding a way home, I didn't want to arrive to discover that I had inadvertently destroyed the human race, thereby leaving Deep Space Nine entirely full of Bajorans, or something equally inconvenient.

Doctor Warrick clapped his hands, and a tray of drinks appeared in mid air. I didn't insult either one of us by pretending surprise.

I picked up the offered drink, though, and took a polite sip. I was still mildly horrified to think that, out there, some antediluvian piece of equipment was directly stimulating my poor, defenseless nervous system merely to create an experience more easily achieved by opening a bottle. On the other hand, compared to the other insults and assaults it had suffered lately, this one at least tasted good.

"It's excellent," I said. "Gin and tonic. I've tasted it on Deep Space Nine, although, oddly, only on the holodeck."

"Should make you feel at home, then," Toreth said. Then he gave Warrick a significant look. "Shall we?"

"Yes, of course. Now." Warrick waved his hand, and a control panel appeared in mid-air beside him. "If you don't mind, can we start the protocol? First of all, I want to try a little metamorphing, which is the word we use for altering your sim experience by means outside the limits of the physical representation. Most people find it difficult, so this is something of a long-shot. If it doesn't work, then we can try other approaches."

I nodded. "What do I need to do?"

"I want you to imagine yourself. Your true body, as you think of it. Can you visualise it clearly?"

I looked down at my grey-scaled hands, which had survived the process of translation to the sim. "That won't be a problem."

"Excellent. We've found the most effective technique is to close your eyes and imagine yourself, then concentrate on those features which appear most clearly to your internal eye. But if another strategy seems more appealing, by all means try that first. Generally we limit a first sim experience to half an hour, but so long as you don't suffer any ill effects we can stay for longer than that."

I noted how completely Toreth had abstracted himself from the conversation. He had stepped back and merely stood nearby, unobtrusive and plainly willing to let Doctor Warrick lead the process, but watching everything.

So I looked down at myself and concentrated. I had no way of telling if I was succeeding, as to my own eyes my body appeared unchanged, but I reasoned that should help rather than hinder, if the sim worked as Doctor Warrick had described. In essence I was merely overwriting the externally generated scan with my own internal truth.

"That was very fast," Warrick said only a minute or so later. He sounded genuinely impressed.

I lifted my head. Warrick actually looked startled. Toreth was studying me intently, as though he were taking notes of new bodily parts he could inflict abuse upon later.

"Odd as I'm sure it sounds to you, I've had a lifetime of experience of this body," I said. "Albeit a very long way from here."

"Interesting," Warrick said after a moment studying me. "Very interesting. I don't suppose—would you mind undressing?"

"Why not?" I said. I'd spent enough time naked over the past days, in far less pleasant circumstances.

Before I could move to undress, my clothes simply vanished. I suppose Doctor Warrick had removed them, which made me realise that his control panel was merely a prop, something which he maybe used to make other people feel more comfortable in the shifting virtual world. My respect for him increased again. Tinged, shortly after, with mild irritation.

"It isn't very alien," Warrick said.

"I beg your pardon?"

"The body. Bipedal. Eyes, nose and mouth all in the same place. Similarly jointed elbows, wrists, knees and ankles. Hands and feet with five digits." He started to walk around me. "Similarly placed musculature. Vertebrae—same count, I think. Likewise with the ribs and the structure of the pelvis. Length of the legs and arms, proportional to each other and to the trunk. Even the bony structure of the face and skull—the skin and ridged features hide them somewhat but if it were conceptually possible to take a genuine medical image inside the sim, I'd be surprised if they were a radical departure from normal."

"Well," I said somewhat stiffly. "I do apologise if I disappoint."

"No, I'm sorry. That was very rude of me." He smiled, rather charmingly, actually. "Para-investigator Toreth calls it my lecturing voice and he finds it equally offensive. Now, if you'll forgive me, and since the first part of the protocol has gone so well, perhaps we could try some other things?"

As you can imagine, insults or not, I was quite willing. No one had injected me with pharmacologically primitive toxins or electrostimulated any part of me for the whole day, and I was finding the change most restful.

Toreth waited with surprising patience, observing the experiments as we carried them out. Doctor Warrick ran me through different representations of my body, including my best memories of childhood. Then he took me into a few different sim 'rooms' and, with rather less success, I tried to 'think' them into scenes from my life on Deep Space Nine. Once again, I felt the curious reluctance to break the Prime Directive. Who knew what tiny detail might be picked up and turned into something of ground-breaking significance?

In all, we were there for almost four hours. I can say without any doubt that they were the most pleasant of my time on that Earth.

***

We exited the sim and the waiting technicians released me from the tight sim straps and suffocating helmet so rapidly that I barely had time to break out in a terrified sweat.

Toreth and Warrick studied the room's large screens together, as the results of the system's analysis of my simulated experiences displayed. At one point Toreth rested his hand low on Doctor Warrick's back. I can't believe he forgot I was there—that wasn't Toreth's style. After a few seconds the Doctor said something sharp under his breath, and Toreth removed the hand, clasping his other hand demurely behind his back instead.

"She's telling the truth as she believes it," Doctor Warrick said finally.

"Fuck." Toreth took a step back. "That's exactly what the Psych lot said after they'd finished scanning."

"If you already knew, why did you bring her here?" Warrick asked sharply.

"Because you have better kit. I keep telling you how useful the sim would be for interrogation."

To my surprise, Doctor Warrick went absolutely pale with anger. "So you lied to me? I suppose this woman isn't in as much danger as you said, either?"

I was about to protest that, woman or not, I very much was, but Toreth was there already.

"I'm sorry," he said smoothly. "I didn't mean that. I needed you because whoever did this did it to fool us—to fool the mindfuckers, ultimately—which means they didn't do it to fool the sim. Mindfuck don't have access to the technology any more than we do. The sim really was the only chance."

"I see." The explanation seemed to mollify Doctor Warrick somewhat. Or at least make him willing to postpone an argument until later. "Well then, I'm afraid I can't do anything else to help you. As far as I can tell, everything we've looked at has been an entirely genuine memory. If the memories weren't so utterly bizarre I would be prepared to guarantee it." Warrick's voice carried the certainty of someone who was either a fool, or who knew himself to be at the apex of his profession. "If they're created then it's been done by someone with access to technology about which I haven't heard even a whisper."

And that, I supposed, was always an option. I still hadn't entirely let go of the wistful theory that this could be a phenomenally elaborate holodeck experience. I couldn't imagine it was possible, without some crack having appeared in the simulation, but it was still awfully tempting to suggest to Doctor Warrick that he was merely a product of the imagination of a sim-builder of the future.

I didn't. He seemed like a decent enough human, despite his sad lack of appreciation for superior Cardassian biology and his questionable taste in sexual partners, and besides I was rather hoping for a repeat visit to the place, which was at least somewhere away from I&I.

"I'm sorry, Ms Mabey," he said to me as I left the room with Toreth. He shook my hand, and the grip lingered, as though he wanted to find an excuse to detain me.

"Thank you for trying, anyway," I said.

"Believe me, if there was anything else I could think of to get to the truth, I would spend all the sim time it needed."

I briefly wondered why, if he really felt that way, he hadn't lied and said he had another option to try. Perhaps that kind of deception simply didn't occur to him, or perhaps lying about the sim was worse than sending an innocent woman off to her likely death. Or perhaps he didn't want to lie to an I&I representative, however intimate the terms they enjoyed.

Whatever the reason, he was genuinely sorry for me, I think. I wonder how he would've felt if he'd realised he was shaking the hand of someone of no very greater moral probity than my escort?

***

"Well, that was a waste of a morning," Toreth said, as we descended in the elevator to the ground floor of SimTech. He didn't sound especially disappointed. "Missed my coffee break. Still, I missed a couple or boring meetings too, so it could've been worse."

"What happens now?" I asked.

"I got a message from Mindfuck before we left, actually. They'll transfer you today. I think someone sufficiently high up finally heard about your implanted memories and now it's all a rush job. Typical."

The news sent a chill through me. Although I hadn't yet visited the place, the mixture of contempt and uneasy respect with which the interrogators referred to Psychoprogramming filled me with very unhappy apprehension. Primarily because their techniques seemed to involve sedatives and heavy-duty brain manipulation equipment, both of which are depressingly unresponsive to witty badinage.

And after my time spent with the peak of Administration neural technology, the idea of something even more crude blundering around inside my brain filled me with stark horror.

"Then why bother with the sim?" I asked.

"It might've worked and then I could've taken the credit."

For a case he'd already told me was closed. "And you wanted to fuck with someone. With Doctor Warrick."

He just smiled.

"Perhaps another attempt here, first...I'm sure there's more that the good Doctor can do."

"Maybe, but as of today you're not my problem any more. So back home we go."

His attention was slipping away, almost tangibly. I'd been a curiosity and then a tool, but when my usefulness was exhausted I became of less interest than whatever hot beverage he would enjoy that afternoon.

Still outside the door—perhaps they hadn't been permitted into the building—the two I&I guards waited for us. They were leaning again the glass wall, looking rather untidy in the elegant space but very satisfied with their morning in the sun. Satisfied and not especially alert.

It was something I'd noted in I&I before—the guards were armed, but the para-investigators were not. I assumed it was another quirk of their somewhat odd political and organizational structures, akin to the bizarre rules that had led to me signing a consent form for experimental interrogation.

Whatever the reason, the point was that I would very shortly be within a few feet of a sun-doped armed guard, and I was no longer several levels below ground. And I was very, very desperate.

The doors opened, letting in the fresh air I would have to fight for if I wanted a chance to breathe it again later. I grabbed the gun from the nearest guard, and I turned and fired at the second guard. I think the shot hit but didn't fatally injure him. I can't say for sure, though, because the kick of the solid projectile startled me considerably, and then less than only a moment later, before I could run, the second guard pulled out his weapon as he fell and fired at me. At least I assume that was what happened. I didn't feel the round hit me, but there was a loud explosion and a flash of light, then a scream, and I felt myself falling as the world went dark around me. It seemed a very long way to the ground.

I should have taken my chance and shot Toreth first and then the other guard. Ah, well.

***

And so, Captain, that was the point in the narrative where you found me, unconscious, with the gun still in my hand, and the Ambassador lying dead on the floor beside me and the rest of his embassy rather unattractively decorating the inside of Quark's Bar. If Odo's security systems say that I arranged to meet him there after hours, and that I shot him and set off the bomb, I can only accept that I did—or rather, that my body was carrying the equipment. And that is all the explanation I can give. I'd never even heard of the Ambassador's planet until today, so why I or anyone else would want to kill him is quite beyond me.

You know, I almost wish I was back at I&I. At least there I could prove that _I_ believe I'm telling the truth, even if no one else ever will.

I am also, I should point out, more that a little insulted that no one noticed my prolonged mental absence from Deep Space Nine. And that no one has complained about the quality of my tailoring on the work carried out during that time. Nothing in Angela Mabey's file suggested she was a skilled seamstress. Or a skilled assassin.

If it was indeed Angela Mabey inhabiting my body during the entire time I was away, then surely she must have lived a far more interesting life in the Administration than anyone, including the rebels who believed that they were using her for their own ends, ever guessed. Either that, or she learned a lot faster than I did, for which she deserves even more credit. I suppose I ought to wish her luck; she'll need it, if she is indeed back home and still alive. I doubt that Para-investigator Toreth will thank her for complicating his case yet again.

***  
***


End file.
